Hackers have reportedly broken into LinkedIn’s user accounts, stealing 6.5 million encrypted passwords and posting them to a Russian site, says TNW, citing a European security researcher. The hackers apparently posted the passwords to the site and called for help in cracking the encryption.

Once in the account, the bad guys could potentially have access to a user’s personal data and possibly their credit card information, if it’s for LinkedIn services.

LinkedIn, meanwhile, sent out a tweet this morning:

Our team continues to investigate, but at this time, we’re still unable to confirm that any security breach has occurred. Stay tuned here.

Nonetheless, I say be a smart user and change your password as a precaution.

Related Articles

Comments

LinkedIn is having a bad week to be sure. Their mobile apps have been leaking data. In particular, data from the meeting notes section of your calendar events. On their blog they have turned this off and clarified what they do and don’t do. The fix is now available for Android users and will appear for iOS as soon as Apple approves the update. But whether or not the passwords have been stolen, always a good idea to change them periodically.

More information from security researchers. On this blog post from Cisco here, they actually found serveral of their password hashes. There is also good advice and do’s and don’ts that is worth reviewing.

If you’re planning on starting an affair on eHarmony, now might be a good week to commence with the philandering. When it all goes horribly wrong after the wife discovers a series of compromising emails on your phone, you can always blame it on the work of hackers.